


Storms in the Night

by dreamoverdrive



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-04-10 17:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4400849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamoverdrive/pseuds/dreamoverdrive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katara struggles with coming to terms on her abilities and the secret she has to keep on a night of a full moon.  </p><p>She turned to glare, blue eyes wide in her face and cheeks glazed over with frozen tracks. “And how could you know that,” she spat. “How do you know you’re safe with me out here? With me, a—“ she broke off, words seeming to freeze in her throat. Her eyes widened and filled with tears at the effort it took her to spit out the last words. “A blood bender.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Storms in the Night

Pale white light lit the blank expanse of snow. Zuko tried to stifle a shiver, wrapping the thick folds of his borrowed coat tighter around his shoulders. He couldn’t remember being so cold in his life, excepting the raid on the Northern Water Tribe. Everything then had been a blurry, bitter mess, and he shivered again remembering it all while he stood as a friend on Southern Water Tribe soil. 

He frowned at his boots. Perhaps it was more correct to say standing on ice rather than soil. 

He shook his head and trudged on into the steady wind. He almost wished he could convince himself to fire bend, but the energy of this night was too strange. There was a foreign and overbearing feel to the wind and the light of the full moon. He felt an unease that was deep set in his bones and at his core, and he knew that tonight was not a night for fire bending. 

Zuko continued on the pre-made trail of parted and mashed snow he knew to be Katara’s. Sokka had told him that she’d left at dusk with a strange look on her face. He had held a wary look in his own eyes, and Zuko knew that Sokka was aware as well as frightened of Katara’s abilities. Not frightened by his sister, but frightened by what she was capable of. 

Zuko had started off immediately in the wake of her path. He wasn't quite certain what he meant to say or do when he found her, or why he thought it was a good idea to go at all. He just knew that he had to go. 

He saw a small figure in the distance ahead of the path he’d been following. Worry thickened in his chest. He thought she’d been going to a cave that she knew, or in search of a refuge for the night. She had chosen to kneel in the middle of nowhere on a evening with sharp winds that stirred up heavy flurries of snow and who knew what else.

“Katara!” he yelled, trying to move faster. As he grew closer he could see her long braid flapping in the wind and her bowed head. He felt an intense relief when he saw that she had cleared snow around herself and that she hadn’t stopped out of injury. She had planned to stop there, and whatever that meant was lost on him in the knowledge that she was at least physically well. 

“Katara.” He drew up behind her, stopping an arms length away and trying to rub warmth back into his arms through his coat. “Katara, I’m here.”

She didn’t move. He stood waiting, not sure whether the wind had snatched his words away or if they had even been enough in the first place. Finally, she said in a low voice, “You need to leave, Zuko. You’re not safe here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He lowered himself down on a patch of ice where she had cleared away snow. “I’m safer here than I could be anywhere else on the face of the earth.” 

“Stop.” Her voice was brittle like the ice that had crunched under his boots on the walk. “You know why that’s not true and you know why I came here tonight.”

There was a small silence as he listened to the whistling of the wind over the barren field and tried to pick his words. “I do know why you came here. I also know that you, Katara, won’t hurt me. Not unless I give you reason to.”

She turned to glare, blue eyes wide in her face and cheeks glazed over with frozen tracks. “And how could you know that,” she spat. “How do you know you’re safe with me out here? With me, a—“ she broke off, words seeming to freeze in her throat. Her eyes widened and filled with tears at the effort it took her to spit out the last words. “A blood bender.”

He fought the urge to reach out to her, not wanting to startle or cause panic. He spoke in a slow, calm voice. “Because regardless of your capabilities, you are first and foremost Katara. Ambassador of peace, healer, and warrior of her people. You are a blood bender.” She cringed away at the title, eyes darting off to stare into the black distance rather than remain on him. “But you are far more, and your skills say nothing about you. Only what you choose to do with them defines you, Katara, and you have done great things and helped many people.”

“They’re scared of me.” Her voice had lost its cold edge and her eyes slowly moved down to fix on her hands. “They’re scared of me,” she repeated in a whisper that he had to lean in to hear. “After all we’ve done together, after all this time, they’re scared of me.” Her eyes flashed up to Zuko in desperation. “Just because of what I can do. I didn’t ask for this! I never wanted it! He of all people should know what’s like to have a burden you didn’t choose.”

Zuko inched closer. “Katara, what’s wrong? Why are you out here tonight when you’ve been handling it all this time—“

“They’re making it illegal.” She spoke in a flat voice and he had to process her words one more time to get their full meaning.

“They’re what?”

“They’re making it illegal.” Her eyes flashed in the pale light with fury. Zuko had to search to find the hints of fear that lightened them. “They’re making blood bending illegal.”

He stared into her eyes for a moment and waited for her face to shift from icy rage into something softer. When they didn’t, he spoke. “What does this mean to you?”

She barked out a laugh. “I’m glad, of course. I haven’t used it in years and I never plan on using it again.” A sharp shudder shook her shoulders. “But the way they speak about it, the way all those politicians say the name.” She paused and a long moment passed as she stared away with her eyes glazed. “Blood bender,” she said softly, as if she were repeating someone who spoke first. “Filthy, demon, blood benders.”

“They said that to you?” He tried to keep the rising fury out of his voice. “They called you those words—“

“No, of course not. No one knows I’m one of them.” She looked back at Zuko, a bitter expression on her face and sardonic smile on her lips. “It’s a secret. It wouldn’t do for someone as important as me to be dehumanized. I have too much work to do, too much peace to make to be revealed for what I really am.”

“Katara.” He reached out and grasped her bare hand with his glove, clutching it tight and rubbing it to start the flow of blood again. “You are exactly what you present yourself to be. Someone working relentlessly to make the world a better place.”

She stared at their linked hands with her lips pressed together. “They said all of those names so casually. They looked at me like they expected me to join in, like they expected me to lead them in all of it. And Aang…” She grew terribly still and Zuko tried to warm her hands faster to make up for it. “Aang just listened. And when he looked at me, there was no apology or sympathy. Just a warning. Warning me not to give myself away to them and warning me to sit in silence while they carried on for hours.”

She let out a deep, shuddering breath and Zuko forced the anger out of his system. Anger wouldn’t help him or her tonight. “Katara, would you let me hold you right now?”

She looked back up at him, her face a mixture of surprise, longing, and self-loathing. “After everything I’ve said, you still want to hold me? Zuko, I can feel the blood in your body! I can feel it flowing and I can manipulate it!” She took in a ragged breath that seemed to rattle in her throat. “I can make you feel horrible things, don’t you know that? Why are you still here?”

He lifted her hand that still rested in his gloves and raised it to his neck. He pushed away the hood of his cloak and laid her fingers against the warm skin beneath his jaw, right above his pulse. 

She stared in horror, eyes flashing between his face and her hand. “Zuko, you have no idea what I can do to you right now—“

“I do,” he said simply. “I’m sure you could end me in all kinds of ways right now with a twitch of your finger. But you know what, Katara?”

Her wide eyes came to rest on his face and asked the silent question. 

“I’m not scared right now. The Katara I know deserves to be feared in many ways, and not one of them is her ability to blood bend. I”m safe.” He paused, reaching for her other hand that laid in her lap and placing it with the first. “Here. With you.”

Tears flooded her eyes and she leaned into him, her hands sliding down from his neck to rest on his chest. “Thank you so much, Zuko,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“Secret or no secret,” he murmured into her cold hair, “You are Katara. And I’d jump in front of lightning for you again this second, and the next second, and every second after that.”

She lifted his hands to her lips and pulled back his mittens and sleeves so that she could kiss his wrists, right above his pulse. Then she leaned up and he tilted his head back so that she could press her lips to his neck on the place he had laid her hands. 

“I would bend oceans for you, Zuko,” she murmured into his skin. “I would bend the oceans and heavens to keep you safe.”

He smiled into the cold. “I’m safe with you, Katara, and you’re safe with me. Nothing could change that.”

She reached up and tilted his face down to hers. “Nothing,” she whispered in agreement against the warmth of his lips. “Absolutely nothing.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually written for the Clandestine prompt of zutara week! I didn't know it was going to take this direction until it did? Hah, yay for no planning...


End file.
